Doomed to Love
by ChristineBH
Summary: Not many think of the lions and how they have felt during their time alive. How much they have loved and mourned each life they had held inside of their cockpits. Red didn't either when she was created but she learned her lesson and wished that there was a way to stop the cycle of getting a paladin, loving the paladin and losing the paladin. At least she has the other lions.


Many civilians thought only of the paladins when they thought about the sacrifices made in fights they had been through. Which, at times Red thought was justified. After all the paladins had been the ones to fear for their lives and risk their fragile bodies in the search for justice and peace for others.

Red couldn't fear death in the same way. She was made from the same metal as her fellow lions. Sisters and brothers as many creatures would call it but Red would never know the full extent of what that bond meant when pack creatures or just the ones that stayed with their mother and siblings until maturity talked about. Red knew this but she still called the blue and green lions her sisters and the black and yellow ones her brothers.

They had different colors but almost no family was identical. Red has seen some that looked the same, twins they had been called, and one time she saw _three_ walking next to each other with almost identical DNA and completely identical features, but no family was only identical aliens on a line so Red loved that they weren't the same. It made them individuals as any family consisted of.

However, they were similar like almost all families; they were all bigger than most organic creatures and somewhere between technology, sentience, and magic.

Their exoskeleton were nearly indestructible and they all had a core that kept on living. It wasn't a life she had chosen, just as being born organic wasn't what every other living creature had chosen and she didn't know a life that wasn't this, but if she could chose, she wasn't sure she would have chosen this life. At least she had her brothers and sisters to share woes with.

In the start she hadn't understood that they had been doomed. Everything had been so easy. Sure, there were fights but mostly they either just transported the paladins or scared the enemy. The paladins did get hurt at times but there were something inside of the castle that made their heartbeat slow from everything between a single varga and several quintantes and then the paladins would return to the hangar tired but completely fine. It made all the lions sad when someone's paladin was hurt, especially if it was their own, but a few reassuring feelings sent the unfortunate lion's way and everything was fine.

The first one to get hurt enough to need more than 2 vargas of slowed heartbeat had been the yellow lion's paladin named Gyrgan. It had been unfortunate, as Gyrgan had been hurt less than a movement before getting hurt again.

Yellow had been quiet for some time after they had all returned to the castle, not that the lions ever engaged in mindless chatter but Yellow had been too quiet and was sent concerned feelings and sympathy by his brother and sisters until he finally said something.

"I wish I didn't have a paladin," he sent to the others even more robotic and emotionless than Red was used to despite being a robot herself.

She hadn't moved but she had sent her confusion to Yellow as obvious and clear as if she had cocked her head or furrowed the eyebrows she didn't have. She had been young, they all had been. They ages had still been counted in phoebes back then and Red didn't understand what wishing something was. Back then she couldn't have imagined things if they hadn't been in front of her. For her there had been no future and practically no past. Wishing for something to not be there but that had been there for her whole life had been literally unimaginable for her.

"We're doomed to love, Red," Yellow had explained. "One day our paladins will not exist anymore."

She should have listened to him back then. She hadn't given him enough credit for his wit but she had been young and ignorant. It hadn't helped that Yellow had been clumsy with his explanation but he hadn't known the word 'death' either. Only that every organic thing that the capability to stop existing and every major injury could end a life.

"Then we will just find new ones," she had informed him. She had loved Alfor just as much as she would later love the other paladins but she hadn't had the creativity to imagine herself mourning.

"Exactly, we will have to love those ones and then the next ones and then the next ones again. It will never stop!" Yellow had hissed. Losing one's temper was Red's domain but Yellow had been the first one to really lose it.

Red didn't answer that. The other lions felt her confusion but no one answered her and she was too perplexed to find any words to ask.

* * *

Alfor's offspring was born deca-phoebes later and Red loved it and learned to grow just as the baby did. She watched Allura, the offspring, discover her own hands, silly child didn't know that they were in fact part of herself, and she watched Allura learn that the reflection on Red's leg was not another child. Allura was as creative as any other child Red would later meet and Red stole a little of her imagination and learned to see things inside of herself that was not in front of her. Things that maybe wouldn't ever be there but Red learned to imagine them.

Red still hadn't understood what Yellow had said before even more deca-phoebes had passed and Allura was a young woman trapped in stasis while her people and planet died. Red could do nothing as Alfor, her paladin and tutor in almost everything sentient, died and she learned to mourn in his absence.

She never wanted to feel the same pain again and had tried to keep Keith alive from the moment she saw him being pulled into the vast and empty space. She has been fierce and often overprotective and it had worked so many times but even she couldn't have predicated everything and her speed wasn't enough to save Keith in his last battle.

The next one, she had promised herself, I'll be able to save the next one.

After the next one's death she had begged that there wouldn't be someone else for her to love. Someone else to name and watch grow but never growing enough. They all died before they had reached their potential.

That was all they would ever be. Alfor had been someone with the potential to unite people and she had named him Peacegiver despite him not wanting the position as Voltron's leader and therefore limited the spread of his peace. Keith had had the abilities of a leader and then some. He could have been a great leader if he had had the time to grow and leave some of his heart stopping stupidities behind. He had been named Firebringer despite Red both loving the everlasting fire that she had hoped that it would have never stop but at the same time she had also wished that it could have been more controlled.

Then there had been Running Light, Smiling Bruiser, Dancer, Deadly Shadow, Crimsonkicker, and the last one until Red would eventually fall in love again was Swordbiter.

She had tried to resist each one of them since Alfor's death and had went from the most picky lion to downright the hardest and nearly impossible one to bond with. The red paladins had all tried so hard and in a way, it had helped them since she couldn't stop herself when she was reminded of former paladins dying just like _that_ , but at the same time they could have done nothing and still gotten her. She was chosen to love another one the moment she laid eyes on them. Maybe even before that. She was only a machine and couldn't resist her programing forever.

Every time she was introduced to someone new in her cockpit, she would act distant, more and more and for longer each time it happened, and the change from that and to nearly smothering them without losing her own temperament and impulse would be more abrupt for each paladin. The ones remembering the last paladin's journey to her heart would always cheer when she gave into her fondness for the newest paladin and make the new red paladin join in while Red mourned the inevitable loss of a little more of herself that was sure to come.

They all died young. She wasn't sure about specific ages. She knew that being over ten thousand years was old, but every species lived for different amounts of time so she counted years as how much her paladins grew mentally and physically. Firebringer, or Keith as he was called by everyone but her, had been her youngest. Both in age to find her and the age to leave her. Alfor had been the oldest and the one she had been allowed to keep the longest and the contrast between those two was enough to make the other lions mourn even deeper with her every time she remembered than the lions did when any of the other long deceased paladins were brought to their minds.

That didn't mean that any other paladin was loved any less, but the cruelty of having someone for so long, enough to raise a child even older than her next paladin started out as, and thinking the next one will last for much longer than he had was just cruel. Peacebringer had been a campfire, warm and lasted all night, and Firebringer had been a bomb that affected everything around him in a second but then were never heard from again. Only the remains of the wood used for the fire and the cold surrounding everything toasty and the devastation following an explosion was what was left of them. All former paladins had hurt and still did but the comfort in having Peacebringer with her for so long and unfairness of Firebringer's younger than everyone else's age made them stand out more.

She tried her best every day she had a paladin but every one of them died in her care. Blue, Green, Yellow, and Black often had the same problem but not always. Only she did and the only one with offspring had been Alfor where the other lions more often than not had had at least one offspring to find and give comfort to when their paladin died of injuries or old age.

She wished she could have just one of Green's paladins. Physically weaker but smarter. Not as reckless, not as impulsive and not always a young corpse. One of them had gotten sick with no cure but Green had been lucky with almost everyone except that one.

Or someone like Yellow's paladins. Scared enough to not do things that made Red and every other lion terrified. None of Yellow's paladins had been cowardly in any sense of the word but they had been alive for so much longer than any of Red's had with the exception of Peacebringer, but all the lions' first paladins had lived for the longest.

Or she could have had one of Black's paladins. Smart, leaderly but with a far colder head than any of hers had had.

Or Blue's paladins, sure Red had had one of Blue's for a while and she had started to love him too even though she had longed for her own that had been inside of Black, but it had been nice having someone just as capable as her own paladin that actually used the gift of thought before rushing into something. At the same time, it had been torture. Just being one step behind Firebringer and not able to help him as she wanted to and she had been so happy to be reunited with him when Black got his paladin back that Red hadn't even thought about how much more trouble her paladin was.

Maybe that was why she loved them. They were never easy but always good. Always full of fire and fight and able to bring the most reckless and thoughtful out of her.

Red sometimes hated just as she loved Peacebringer, her first Paladin and the one to teach her about death and real sorrow, for making her like he had. Intentionally or not, he had created something capable of love but not of losing it again. That was a lesson she was trying to learn on her own, but instead of the hurt from loving too much fading, it only grew with each death.

Maybe she would stop remembering them at some point. A machine only had a certain amount of memory but she was already old and every single one of her beloved was stored inside of her mind as clear as the day she had created those memories with them.

Red couldn't die, none of the lions could, but she longed for death. Not necessarily now but she wanted the knowledge that this would end and she wouldn't have to repeat the cycle forever.

The yellow lion had been right; they were doomed, cursed, to love forever. She wouldn't switch any of her paladins for anything but she also wished that she wouldn't gain another paladin.

She wished that she couldn't hear footsteps nearing her and she wished that she couldn't feel a tightness inside of her. An organic feeling that she shouldn't be capable of but that she had felt every time she had laid eyes on a future red paladin for the first time.

She laid eyes on her newest paladin and tried to strangle the tightness despite it never working before.

The cycle had begun again.


End file.
